


Share the Load

by legendaryroar



Series: Shatt Week 2018 [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Brief reference to torture, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Held Prisoner, M/M, Post-Kerberos Mission, Pre-Relationship, Pre-reunion, Shatt Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 03:36:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15548718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legendaryroar/pseuds/legendaryroar
Summary: Shiro often wakes not long after falling asleep, trembling and muttering in Japanese. He always pulls Matt closer and holds him tighter then too. Sometimes he even hides ins face in the crook of Matt’s neck, and Matt can feel tears against his skin, showing him that Shiro is more affected that he lets on most of the time.It makes Matt feel a little better. To be the one holding them both together in the dark for once. Even if he’s falling to pieces more often than Shiro, it still feels like it balances some invisible scales.





	Share the Load

The cells are even worse after they take Matt’s dad away. He screams and cries and lashes out at the alien guards, but Shiro pulls him back before he can even really try to get to his dad. It’s all over within moments, and the door to the cell is slamming shut, echoing painfully in the small space. For a long time, Matt stares at it, sagging in Shiro’s arms until Shiro is the only thing holding him up.

The other aliens, who had all rushed to the back of the cell when the door had opened, begin to spread out again, but all Matt can do is stare at the door where his dad disappeared and hear his cries echoing in his ears. Shiro is starting to shake him and talk to him, but he can’t even hear him. Nothing else exists but his father’s cries for him and the sinking feeling that he’s never going to see him again.

Other aliens, all strange, unfamiliar looking things, had been taken out by the guards before. None of them had returned.

“Matt. Matt!” Shiro’s words are starting to register, but Matt still can’t stop staring at the door and the tiny square of light from the hole in it. “Pull yourself together!”

After a while, Shiro starts pulling him over to a corner, pushing and tugging at him until he sits down. Almost immediately, Shiro is right there beside him, slinging an arm over his shoulders, murmuring comforting things quiet and low, as if trying to hide the words from aliens who don’t understand them anyway.

“We’re going to die here,” Matt mutters. “We’re never going to see Earth again.”

Shiro doesn’t seem to have a response to that, except to tighten the arm he has over Matt’s shoulder and pull him closer. The motion makes Matt’s head drop onto Shiro’s shoulder, and even though they weren’t close when they first went on the mission that led to this, Matt doesn’t resist it.

Regardless of what he thinks about Shiro, he’s all Matt has left now.

 

* * *

 

Many more days pass. Matt’s lost count. The cell stays dark, aside from the small square of light coming from the door. There’s a constant low mutter of alien voices, and the guards deliver food every now and then. It’s unfamiliar and make his stomach hurt for a long time, but then it seems he adjusts. He doesn’t get those pains in his stomach anymore at least. Shiro fares better than him with whatever they throw at them. Maybe Shiro is just stronger than him.

Or maybe it’s just that Shiro didn’t lose his father right in front of him. Isn’t plagued with dark imaginings of what the aliens might have done to him. All the horrible ways they might have hurt and killed him. It isn’t hard to imagine, just horrible to imagine.

Every now and then, a guard takes one of them away. They both fought and struggled the first time, sure that they were being led away as Matt’s dad had been. But they were brought back afterwards. After they were done with them.

After a few times, they stopped struggling so hard when they were taken. Stopped fearing they wouldn’t be led back to the same cell after.

Matt’s always taken to a strangely lit room, with strange instruments. They never really ask anything, they poke and prod and scan. Matt finds himself rambling and cursing them. Asking for his dad. Begging that they bring him back. Sometimes whatever they do to him hurts so much he can’t speak at all, but if they get close enough, he tries to kick them, or hit them. If he’s able to move any part of his body, he tries to use it against them. Anything to try and stop the pain.

He never tells Shiro about any of this, of course, and Shiro never shares what happens when he’s dragged away either. But every time Shiro comes back, he sits next to Matt, loops an arm over his shoulder and pulls him into his side. He often doesn’t let go for hours. Or what feels like hours at least. There’s no way to really track time. The meals don’t seem to come at regular intervals, Matt’s already tried figuring out the days that way. It’s more likely they only get fed when someone remembers they exist. Or just enough to keep them alive for whatever purpose they’re being kept there.

Before the mission, he and Shiro had been passing acquaintances in the Garrison. That had had more to do with Shiro being idolised as the poster boy since he’d first started breaking records soon after joining. He was always being pulled away by command to do this or that photoshoot or endorsement. And he’d always looked so awkward around others. Playful with the few close friends he’d joined with, but seeming rather untouchable to everyone else with all the promotional work the Garrison put him through acting like a wall separating him from the lesser cadets.

Going on mission with him had been eye-opening to say the least. He was everything the Garrison said he was, of course, but he was also a lot more laid back and friendly than he’d seemed always wandering the Garrison with a tense posture and grumpy expression.

And now he’s proving to be even stronger and more caring than any of the posters and media about him had suggested. He’s cut off him home and family too, but he just bears it all and keeps holding Matt. Keeps him sane.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take long until the aliens stop taking them away. They’re left in the cell with the others, and he doesn’t know for how long. He seeks out Shiro’s solid, warm presence more and more. They avoid the other aliens and sit near the back to the room, far out of the pale light peeking in through the window in the door.

They sit so close, hold each other so tight, that they end up tangled together in their sleep. Matt sometimes thinks it should be stranger than it is, but then, why deny the only comfort available in this horrible situation? At any moment the guards might come again and take one of them away for good, like they did with his dad.

Thoughts like that always make him huddle closer to Shiro, hold him tighter. He’d feel embarrassed, but Shiro does the same. Shiro often wakes not long after falling asleep, trembling and muttering in Japanese. He always pulls Matt closer and holds him tighter then too. Sometimes he even hides ins face in the crook of Matt’s neck, and Matt can feel tears against his skin, showing him that Shiro is more affected that he lets on most of the time.

It makes Matt feel a little better. To be the one holding them both together in the dark for once. Even if he’s falling to pieces more often than Shiro, it still feels like it balances some invisible scales.

 

* * *

 

When they’re finally moved from their cell, all of them at once, Shiro, grips his right hand tight and stays close, not leaving his side for a moment. They’re shuffled through endless corridors, and then into a smaller craft. It seems like no time at all before they’re herded off the craft and back through corridors that look identical to the ones they’d walked through before.

At least, until they’re being pushed into a large open space. An arena.

Before Matt even comprehends what that means, Shiro is stepping in front of him, scanning the space as if he could take on each and every threat he finds.

“Stay close to me,” he mutters, reaching one hand back, brushing it down Matt’s arm. “Stay behind me. I’ll get us through this.”

Matt wishes he has the strength to be insulted. To insist he can take care of himself. Instead, his mind is supplying him with every fact he knows about the Romans and their gladiator tradition. Useless facts from school, but he recalls perfectly how many prisoners and slaves were estimated to have died in the arena.

And they were only facing other humans or earth animals.

“If they’re not giving us weapons, we’re meant to die,” he mutters, looking up as the space fills with sound. As aliens pour into the arena, taking seats and looking down. Calling out and pointing.

Shiro turns and grips the sides of Matt’s face tight, pulling until their faces are close together and Matt’s balancing on the tips of his toes.

“Just trust me,” Shiro says, low and firm. There’s an edge of something in his tone, like he’s trying to convince himself more than Matt. It reminds Matt of all the times he’s felt Shiro’s tears on his neck, but seen none of that emotion when they’re not trying to sleep. Always hidden away. “Stay behind me, don’t take any risks. I’ll get us through this.”

Matt stares into his eyes, feels the heat of his hands on his face, the strength of his grip. “I trust you,” he whispers.

It’s not like he has any other options anyway.

Shiro releases his face and pulls him into a hug, one hand resting on the back of Matt’s head, pressing his face into Shiro’s neck.

It’s a brief embrace, and over too fast for Matt to really catalogue how it feels, or how he feels about it. They’ve gone from mere acquaintances boarding a spaceship together, to the centre of each other’s world.

But the moment is over. Shiro turns and faces the rest of the arena, putting himself squarely in front of Matt again.

As the noise of the crowd increases, and Matt realises that whatever is going to happen is about to start, he clenches his hands into fists and looks around. He’ll stay behind Shiro like he asked, but if he can, he’ll try to fight as well. They’ll get through it together. He refuses to be a burden on Shiro. A burden will get him killed, and the thought of Shiro dying now turns his blood to ice in his veins.

“I’ve got your back,” Matt says softly, knowing Shiro will hear him anyway. “So you focus on the front.”

Shiro casts him a long glance over his shoulder. Matt thinks for a moment that he’s going to argue with him, but instead, he nods.

“Good luck,” Shiro says, as if he hadn’t tried to take all the work for himself just moments earlier.

His trust soothes some of Matt’s nerves. Makes him believe that he might actually have a chance. That he might actually be useful.

“Good luck,” he echoes softly, as the roar of the crowd increases around them.

**Author's Note:**

> Re-posted from an old account to this, my new one. Written for Shatt Week 2018, Day 3: Kuron/Prisoners. I chose prisoners =)
> 
> You can find me at [@legendaryroar](http://legendaryroar.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


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